Famous Reviews eBook

We have been talking of the contemporary mass; but
this is not all; a great original writer of a philosophic
turn—­especially a poet—­will
almost always have the fashionable world also against
him at first, because he does not give the sort of
pleasure expected of him at the time, and because,
not contented with that, he is sure, by precept or
example, to show a contempt for the taste and judgment
of the expectants. He is always, and by the law
of his being, an idoloclast. By and by, after
years of abuse or neglect, the aggregate of the single
minds who think for themselves, and have seen the truth
and force of his genius, becomes important; the merits
of the poet by degrees constitute a question for discussion;
his works are one by one read; men recognize a superiority
in the abstract, and learn to be modest where before
they had been scornful; the coterie becomes a sect;
the sect dilates into a party; and lo! after a season,
no one knows how, the poet’s fame is universal.
All this, to the very life, has taken place in this
country within the last twenty years. The noblest
philosophical poem since the time of Lucretius was,
within time of short memory, declared to be intolerable,
by one of the most brilliant writers in one of the
most brilliant publications of the day. It always
puts us in mind of Waller—­ no mean parallel—­who,
upon the coming out of the “Paradise Lost,”
wrote to the duke of Buckingham, amongst other pretty
things, as follows:—­ “Milton, the
old blind schoolmaster, has lately written a poem on
the Fall of Man—­remarkable for nothing
but its extreme length!” Our divine poet
asked a fit audience, although it should be but few.
His prayer was heard; a fit audience for the “Paradise
Lost” has ever been, and at this moment must
be, a small one, and we cannot affect to believe that
it is destined to be much increased by what is called
the march of intellect.

Can we lay down the pen without remembering that Coleridge
the poet is but half the name of Coleridge? This,
however, is not the place, nor the time, to discuss
in detail his qualities or his exertions as a psychologist,
moralist, and general philosopher. That time may
come, when his system, as a whole, shall be fairly
placed before the world, as we have reason to hope
it will soon be; and when the preliminary works—­
the “Friend,” the “Lay Sermons,”
the “Aids to Reflection,” and the “Church
and State,”—­especially the last two—­shall
be seen in their proper relations as preparatory exercises
for the reader. His “Church and State,
according to the Idea of Each”—­a little
book—­we cannot help recommending as a storehouse
of grand and immovable principles, bearing upon some
of the most vehemently disputed topics of constitutional
interest in these momentous times. Assuredly this
period has not produced a profounder and more luminous
essay. We have heard it asked, what was the proposed
object of Mr. Coleridge’s labours as a metaphysical
philosopher? He once answered that question himself,
in language never to be forgotten by those who heard
it, and which, whatever may be conjectured of the
probability or even possibility of its being fully
realized, must be allowed to express the completest
idea of a system of philosophy ever yet made public.